greetings and salutation. legendary journalist horace greeley the founder and editor of the famed new york tribune once declared fame is a babe or a popularity an accident and riches take wing is only one thing endures and that is character and character is what's been severely missing these days in the scorched earth carnival landscape that is modern journalism oh oh we have a lot we have a lot of characters but very little characters. take the strange mixed up case of the once revered twenty four hour cable news channel c.n.n.

for example started by media mogul ted turner as the world's first twenty four hour news network the channel has baldwins vaulted into mainstream prominence for its coverage of the first to rock war and has dominated waiting rooms in airports ever since by now i'm sure you've read heard and tweeted that c.n.n. has found itself in a pretty journalistically awkward place during the last few days thanks to right wing provocateurs overzealous c.e.o.'s and reporters frothing all over all things russia gate and c.n.n. carving the nutrients out of healthy journalism in the name in pursuit of rising ratings and you've got a twenty four hour cable news channel that too many appears to be just as shallow as the president they've been dead set on taking down a one could say that in the world of today's news outlets that this is not just a c.n.n. problem but of corporate news media in general. in rolling rolling stone journalist

matt taibbi recently observed that instead of seeking out broad audiences by selling the miller coverage of phony balance big media companies today are abandoning the hope of being credible in both directions and instead aggressively hunting for demographics but. it can journalism survive demographic hunting in the multitude of characters without character let's find out and start watching the hawks. pretty. good looks like a real that this would be. as it were the plot of. the day like you that i got. with. with. this. week's. welcome aboard the watching the hawks diameter over the turbo and

tabitha was to help us find the answers to whether or not c.n.n. and other mainstream news outlets can survive the new normal of ratings and demographics based journalism and just how culpable the new presidents when it hellery clinton's loss had on this new trend we turn to one of the few truly independent thinkers in the field of journalism working today reporter and author of the recent book and same clown president dispatches from the twenty sixteenth circuit is the one the only mattei. matt always a pleasure having you on a will will will start with this that you touched on this in a recent article rolling stone more and more the news media is going to shouting any pretense of objectivity and it's very much everything's going full partners and you can see this with you know matter how olbermann on the left and breitbart man of the in the gang on the right. i think for most of us who you know tragically followed news media has a good part of our lives we've seen this building you know since the sincere imus

of the c. of fox but barely i think that we're see that this pitch can we really attribute all of this just to donald trump the loss of clinton and you know russia. you know i think this trump and this are both symptoms of the same thing which is that. you know we have the sermon towards polarization in this country you know in the old days somebody like donald trump could never been elected because. candidate one. he's had to conquer the center and that's what both political parties from looking for they were looking for somebody who had quote unquote crossover appeal. but now it doesn't work anymore and that this mirror of the old media strategy you know some media creation point out the. standard traditional media method of

hearing one republican quote with one democratic vote and having this kind of very structured balanced all political or whoring with a distant third party third person boys that all who out of an old commercial strategy which was designed to try to appeal to the widest possible audience but. the strategy is out the window and now companies aren't doing that they're not going wide they're hunting for demographics and that's the commercial strategy you're going after liberals over here or conservatives over here libertarians over here and that's how you make your money so it's not it's not really a political thing necessarily it's just that us this is just how media companies are approaching the financial aspect of their work and their profession. now james o'keefe who made this sort of sting video on c.n.n. always seems to run into this issue and some on the left face the same accusations that you have to decide whether you're a journalist or you're an operative if you're reporting on events with a very clear bias like he is or some other people in the business it might endure

you to your base but you're never going to be trusted or heard that same sort of thing with the president it's like you're never going to be trusted or heard outside of your particular political least so isn't it a pretty momentous shift from what we were always taught that good journalism is is that beat out a good journalist and try to reach as many readers or consumers as possible and that challenging your reader or their the viewer is the right thing to do yeah absolutely i mean i think look i don't i don't agree with. doing the kind of work that i do i'm very opinionated nowhere right and i grew up actively disbelieving in the traditional dustbin definition of objectivity everybody's always taught in journalism school which is that you know the reason i believe in it is because you know we're taught that. you know we should strive to be as even as possible and to see this is a perfect middle but there is no such thing you're always betraying your point of

view and you know in terms of well how do you make a headline whether you put a story mph one piece sixteen. whether you're using you know what alarmists alarmist language or not alarmist language there's always editorial choice and also i never really believed in that aspect there was. i always thought it was really more of a salesman than anything else but what's happening now is that. even the most traditional mainstream companies are moving away from the model i mean in . my view the media is that it works best when you have a mix of things when you have that kind of catch just the facts ma'am kind of reporting that you used to mark the three major networks on the one hand and then you also have you might have hundreds or territory southern tom wolfe on the other hand and even there's a place for people like james o'keefe you know i don't love his politics but but i

think there is a place for that kind of stuff actually. but what's interesting now is that sort of everybody is becoming opinionated in the end the idea that you shouldn't strive for objectivity that's now becoming mainstream. i think you're exactly right i like that idea of kind of you got to have like all pieces of the pie that's why you know like to me it's like that's the same thing i like in my politics is give me as many different ideas for as many different parties as possible because i think when you put them all together you might have some good stuff there now let's look at c.n.n. is playing clearly from the videos we've seen in all of that at least amongst the rank and file or whatever you want to say is that they kind of think a lot of what they do is pretty much based on a replay of the ratings so is this play for ratings. you know. i want to get your thoughts on that and your thoughts on you know c.n.n. is kind of current predicament you know chasing down the russia gate story is pretty much put them in a very weird place but will it have any effect on them long term. well i worry

about it for them i mean you know not that the fate of c.n.n. really keeps me awake at night but. obviously there's shoptalk it. goes on in any big media company and you know what that producer said is that i'm usually you know people gossip amongst themselves and i've probably said a thing or two about the motives of my bosses but i think what was interesting about that is that you know there's there's the the the dirty little secret of the media right now is that everybody's making an enormous amount of money as adults from you know a business that had been in a profound in an extra ball decline for decades is now suddenly kind of on the rebound and everybody's doing pretty well you know from the biggest media companies to newspapers even to. to you know small independent outlets and in terms of the big television networks the russia story has been very very successful

for a lot of these networks it's got people thinking you know the way the way that parady put it is the appeal is that people are turning on the television every night and they're thinking you know the fate of the nation is hanging in the balance the same way you do an election night and this gets people to tune in the problem with that is that this puts an enormous downward pressure on reporters to come up with the scoops to keep that up and what happens the reporters i know that you know working in the business if you feel that pressure to come up with something to keep the audience's interest that you met you might miss a little you know a you might start to overhear things from from your sources and i think you know c.n.n. has had a couple of nights recently and that's probably the probably doesn't have been a different happens here i think. it's got a body of it's like god matter we're going to see the day we're like you know whether he resigns or is impeached or leaves office or whatever happens the battle

to where you really going to see that day we're going to see it was rooms of editors and producers and c.e.o.'s going why have missed startled problem. yet. you know i wouldn't be surprised if that's true i mean you know you know if you remember the it was quote from les moonves last year that you know dollar trumps terrible for america but great for business. you know the head of c.b.s. i'm sure of the executives are sitting there thinking this is the greatest thing ever and the whole truth is has achieved something good nobody has ever been able to achieve the news business use he's got. allowed the news business to code into the profit margin margins of the entertainment business and this is previously unthinkable especially when you look at the statistics you read all the time the confidence in the news media is that all time low that people believe us less than they ever have but they're tuning in more than mere ever have and so what does that tell you that they're consuming media into the news more than they ever have but

they're consuming it in different way they're doing it for entertainment purposes almost in a way and that is it's amazing for the news business they must be really excited about it yeah it does seem weird it seems very strange to be you know people hate watch they hate watch the you know the republican debates they hate watched everything alice and i feel like that's kind of what we're doing now but giving up that objectivity isn't the mainstream media in these mainstream news outlets also shooting themselves in the foot on that put on the public trust because why would the general public trust a c.n.n. or a new york times if they continue to sacrifice this integrity just for pushing ratings or openly for a political narrative i mean we used to lock reversal leslie fox news for the exact kind of reporting that we're seeing now today on c.n.n. and that's n.b.c. . i mean yes i agree with you i started to say this last year last

summer because i started to see things moving in the stir action and i was really worried about it and you're exactly right we picked on fox and me we picked on the daily caller and. washington times and and all that all those outlets for being completely tilted towards this politicized view and overtly targeting a demographic by feeding them news they know they knew their audience would like. but the the end result of that and we saw this last year with the republican race that you if you do that long enough even your own audience after a while begins the suspect that you're not really on the level and we saw us again with trump but what happened when the republican media suddenly decided to trump was not an appropriate candidate because there was a moment last year when remember when the national review published that openness with the twenty leading conservatives opposing trump including glenn beck. what

happened republican audiences tuned out those people because they didn't trust them and why didn't they trust them because they knew that they weren't about anything but but a political line about business and that's that's what i worry about the media has to be only about one thing and that's about getting stuff right if we start to you know try and other roles whether it this is about politics whether it's about making money then we're good we get out of our comfort zone and bad things always happen to be the only way we retain trust of people is what is if we make difficult choices just kind of stick to the truth of things no matter how painful that because. you know i think i want to finish up and i'll ask you you know where they where do you see this trend heading and before those out there who you know whether journalists or news consumers you know who kind of would rather have what we were talking about earlier you know kind of like give me a little bit of everything but but keep them honest integrity somewhere in here and don't politicize mean don't try to sell me you know where do you see where we're

going now and where can most people you know what can we do to kind of keep the plight and bring news back to where it should be. i think it's going to be very very difficult i mean we would. the problem is the financial incentives don't run in the right way anymore and the companies now don't see that there's no way they're going to get everybody the same way the politicians understand that there is no message that's going to appeal to both the left and the right now people are so set in their ways that this is this is entirely a competition about turnout you know on the political side and about energizing your base and they don't even try to make a buck you know conquering the middle that's just out of the picture now and it's a picture media companies they're there to give it up and so the whole thing is about consolidating. their target viewership and just keeping a hold on them for as long as possible and so that i really worry but the only evidence is that there's probably going to be a new generation of reporters you come up and it's probably going to start small

turnout media and they're going to be about something different and i'm a bit i'll bit a name that you're going to start to see an exodus of audiences that are going to depart these big networks and they're going to start moving towards these other voices if you are more credible just because they're not about you know politics and they're and they're not about just throwing red meat to a demographic. and i hope that that's the case that there's a new generation coming because of politicized media is a characteristic i'm basically everything no no no lived in a couple of them and it's it would be terrible for the united states to adopt that model i couldn't agree with you more really absolutely but matt thank you so much for coming on once again mount carmel is rolling stone magazine always a pleasure to have you. very take care. as we go to break don't forget to let us know what you think of the topics we've covered on our facebook and twitter pages and see our poll shows that r t v dot com coming up we welcome former cia agent and

torture whistleblower john kiriakou and former military intelligence officer officer joseph into the hawk's nest to discuss their new book the convenient terrorist you go to miss list stay tune. to watch in the hopes. of all the world this day and all the news companies merely players but what kind of parties aren t. american playing are to america offers more artsy america first lead in many ways the news landscape is just like the feel real news big names good actors bad actors and in the end you could never you're on. the market all

the world's all the world's all the world's a stage and we are definitely a player. as the war on terror approaches its sixtieth anniversary we sometimes forget just how shocking and unprecedented some of its darkest turns have ben take for example the case of the beta the first so-called high value target captured by the cia following nine eleven abu zubaida spent years traveling the cia's secret prisons circuit and went through a variety of torture methods including waterboarding sleep deprivation forced hunger and nudity also beatings in two thousand and six he was transferred to a special section of koran tunnel where he has ben ever sense to take us through these dark twists and turns we're joined earlier by john kerry aco and officer who

led the capture of abu zubaida andrus of hickman an ex military intelligence officer who took custody of him and guantanamo working together kiriakou and hickman recently published the convenient terrorist an all encompassing account of the abos a beta affair. thank you very much for joining us talking about your new book let's start i want to commit terrorist as a book because i don't rarely do we get this chance where we can kind of see both the capture of. a war on terror suspect especially a controversial publicized one like. jon what about his capture of anything in his capture wells with you and the events surrounding his capture typical for the war on terror no frankly they were not typical what was typical was we would break down the door of a place that we thought was an al qaeda safe house there would be one or two people inside they would give up immediately we would cover them take them outside and

eventually get around to interviewing them. i mean it was completely totally different we could not narrow his locations down to any fewer than fourteen possible sites and so we had to fly in a huge team half f.b.i. half cia we worked with pakistani military authorities and we hit all fourteen sites simultaneously at two o'clock in the morning we ended up capturing we weren't allowed to say in the book the cia would allow us to say exactly how many people were captured but it was many dozens of people so that was highly unusual what was even more unusual though is you know we were very specific with our pakistani friends that we had to take him alive and as soon as he climbed to the roof of his safe house to try to jump to the roof of the neighboring house to escape the pakistanis just opened fire on him and shot him three times with an a k forty seven they shot him in the five the growing in the stomach and the doctor that night who

saved his life told me that he had never seen wounds so severe where the patient lived but he was a strong young man and he pulled through world is incredible. just so while while stationed at the guantanamo bay prison you thought for a stand at the imprisonment abs that bedo with his. what is his treatment there typical far for prisoners at guantanamo bay at and at the time as a former marine as an army and army sergeant did did the treatment of the beta bother you at all well the treatment of detainees at guantanamo bothered me as a baby was treated very different in the case where he was sent to air to we picked him up. from the airport it one time to d.o.d. actually took custody of him we took him to a classified occasion a classified base most people in the media and called camp seven. now.

camp seven is totally. you know off limits to any other person known to detainees separates him from the other detainees and one of the strangest one of the things that really caught me in a briefing was they told us that they had to keep these fourteen high value detainees that arrived on september ninth two thousand and six one of them being observation of they had to keep them separate from the rest of seanie population because if they were in with the other detainees population the other sunni population want to kill them. and i brought up the question in the briefing they said well. if we have the worst of the worst down here already you would or would or these guys the worst the worst words none of this makes sense of course i wasn't i was overlooked and they just went on with their briefing but none of it made sense he was treated very different in the fact that he was putting them in a classified book ation. you know it's interesting because. as you know

labeled as the number three. trainee in kind of his ilk and that side of the equation on the converse lee a lot of activists and humanitarian rights people say that that is completely not a terrorist and he's never not a crow and never done anything wrong in his life. i want to ask you know in your opinion john where does a beta actually fall on the spectrum of what the one side says is number three man is the completely clean lead where where where where there's a joe and i really really struggled to to make sure that the readers understood that it was a beta situation and position was far more complicated then dick cheney or the defense attorneys would have you have you believe it was a bit it was not the number three and that was just simply not true i don't think

that cia officers and white house policymakers were lying at the time that they said he was number three i think the intelligence was so bad that they just didn't know and they made an assumption that turned out to not be true on the other hand the defense attorneys would have you believe that this poor poor man was mistakenly captured that the intelligence was so faulty that. his life was essentially ruined for something that he didn't do and that's just not true either it's something down the middle i was a bit of was the largest station for al qaeda even though he did not ever formally join the group and never pledged fealty to osama bin laden he was the group's logistician he ran the house of martyr safe house and push our he opened and ran the. al qaeda training camps in southern afghanistan if you were an al qaeda fighter and you wanted to go home you needed a passport maybe a ticket was a bit it was the guy so he was certainly involved but he was not the monster that

the white house wanted to merican to believe the crime never matched the polish never remember the day i think of it we can all agree on that well let me ask this you know so who is this guy who is a bad why why why do you guys think that the cia the administration and the powers that be at the time just became so obsessed with him what was the value. i was a bit is a palestinian that was raised in saudi arabia he as a child he even as a as a young teenager he started questioning the status quo he started questioning you know the how he was treated as a palestinian living in saudi arabia he started questioning how the palestinians were treated by the israelis he was always he was a good kid he was a smart kid but he was he was rebellious and and had

a lot of beliefs he was always looking for for his place in life and i think when he went to afghanistan for a job he training. many many he went to india for college in the meant someone who was going for a job any training in afghanistan which is not uncommon in the middle east. for someone to do this he really thought he found his niche and thought he felt were saudis down where he was supposed to be was was a move to the. and so beta is. i think one of the biggest things that the government why the nice things the government really want to preserve beta at once they realize he wasn't a number three guy he was an al qaida was he was. easy as a rule just is good was names and people is very valuable emerging to government really really want is ruler to his mind. as we all learned from watching

traffic park life finds a way and now it appears that nature has found a way to recycle old cigarette buds in a recent published study researchers at the national autonomous university of mexico have discovered the birds in particular house finches are using the cigarette butts to line their nests in response to ticks and other eco parasites while birds living in close contact with humans have long been known to use our trash for a nasty building it wasn't until recently that when it comes to cigarettes there may indeed be a math aid to the madness nicotine has always been and that role fresh breath an insect repellent and an experiment on thirty two house finch nests research discovered that the nests where ticks were introduced the birds were more likely to add cigarette butts to the lining as opposed to the nass that were clean of tickets no word yet of course if big tobacco executives are looking to replace joe camel with tweety bird. show them i know it will appear to the other but all right that was our show earlier today remember everyone in this world were not told beloved

enough would tell you all i know you i am i roll over the top and on top of the wall if you go on watching all those hawks out there a number of great day and night everybody. on the field we don't. know the. theory. that you get it on the old world. according to josh. that. come along for the raw. data. i'm a trial lawyer i've spent countless hours poring through documents that tell the story about the ugly side of. corporate media everything uses to talk about these

foreigners. i'm going to pick clear picture about how disturbing counsel for conduct has been in my. these are stories that you no one else can get a microphone your host of america. question. the white house on all sense against the media is this really.